


Liminal Spaces

by die_traumerei



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Fluff, Cuddling, Insomnia, Kissing, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-12
Updated: 2014-09-12
Packaged: 2018-02-17 02:50:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2294165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/die_traumerei/pseuds/die_traumerei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky and Steve figure out how to fit into this new world, and how to fit around each other.  How and when they sleep turns out to be a big part of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liminal Spaces

**Author's Note:**

> This! This is what happens when I try to write angst. It goes...all fluffy. Sorry not sorry. Apparently I needed some wistful self-indulgent writing that hits a load of my favorite themes. This time we get the healing power of sleep and the importance of skin-to-skin contact!
> 
> Jim the Rock and Neely are borrowed (and considerably time-shifted) from On The Black Hill and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, respectively.
> 
> Incidentally, I set out to write all my stories in a kind of shared universe, but frankly that is just not happening, so assume that nothing that happens here applies in any other of my stories, and vice-versa. Or it applies only in some kind of comic book retcon way.

They live their lives neither fully together nor entirely apart, but touching all along the edges. They are twilight lovers, meeting in those places that are neither one thing, nor the other.

It started a few months after he found Bucky half-starved, and coughing his lungs out by a distant lake. He will always remember that unearthly landscape, the peat rolling for miles around them in soft hills nice as a lover's curves. Sky grey; a wind always, always blowing. It whipped Bucky's hair, too-long and lank, out of his eyes. Steve waded into the boggy lake to get enough fresh water to wash his face and press the cool cloth to his brow. It was such an exact reverse of how they had once been that he'd had to smile, and that was when Bucky opened his eyes and knew him again.

He got Bucky back to New York, to Brooklyn. To care both medical (for the pneumonia, and his arm would probably never be quite the same again after they'd had to reset it) and practical (food and a safe place, as safe as any place was). To Steve's spare bedroom, then – first for comfort then for joy – to his bed.

It all happened, in a way, because Bucky was getting _better_. Because he was coming back to himself; because all his memories were coming back.

_All_ of them, Steve sometimes reminded himself. Bucky remembered the Winter Soldier, but he also remembered the summers when they'd go to Coney Island. They crammed onto the beach with half the population of Manhattan and played in the water, shoving each other into the breaking waves. A couple of the other boys from the neighborhood came with them, and they all split the cost of ice cream and hot dogs and played in the water until the sun dipped low. They swaggered home, each boy bragging about how he’d been the best at swimming. Steve pointed out that he could slip between waves and the crowds better than all of them, and Bucky was strongest and Jim the Rock fastest and Neely had the most girls looking at him, handsome in his gold curls and wicked blue eyes. (Because there had been girls there too, of course, _such_ _girls_. They’d all shown off for them. Never did there exist on Earth more beautiful girls than those of Coney Island in the summer of 1935.) The occasional blessing of a perfect memory — they both remembered the salt of the waves and the hot sun and the rackety-clackety ride back to Brooklyn.

All of Bucky's memories were coming back, and he was healthier now. The doctors stopped giving him sleeping pills so much, afraid that the doses he needed would overwhelm the healing factor that required them. Steve's hand tightened on Bucky's when someone mumbled something about heart failure. He made them both warm milk with nutmeg in it that night.

Bucky slept deep the first night, curled in Steve's arms, but not again. For four nights and days running, he didn't sleep. He took some of the pills, the dosage they knew would be safe, and spent the fifth night rocking back and forth, hands shaking and eyes unseeing but for hallucinations.

The fifth day dawned cold and cruel, an early April day where the wind blew raw against their windows.

“Bucky, love, you've got to rest,” Steve said, repeating the words because what else was there to do? “I'll be right here. I'll be awake, I'll check the perimeter every hour, I'll do anything you want.”

Bucky was still shaking slightly, but let Steve help him lie down and tuck the quilt around him. He wondered if he'd pass out soon from pure exhaustion, but thought not. “You promise to stay awake?”

“The whole time,” Steve swore. “I've had sleep more recently than you, I'll be fine.” Technically, he had snatched a few hours here and there, and anyway he didn't need much sleep. Not really.

“Don't leave me,” Bucky said, finally, so incredibly softly. “I need...just stay, please.”

Steve lay down beside him, their bodies curving, mirroring one another. He rested his hand on Bucky's hip, rubbing a little through the blankets covering his lover. “I'll stay, I swear I won't move from here. That's it, love. Close your eyes. You're safe. You're safe here. No one will touch you, no one will come close to you. I've got you. I've got my shield right here, no one could reach you through that, no one is that strong...” He kept up the soothing monologue, praying it would work this time, and – somehow – it did. Whether because Bucky was so utterly exhausted, or because he'd healed that little bit more, because he knew more surely how he trusted Steve – it worked.

He slept four hours that morning, while Steve lay there and watched him breathe and never grew bored of it. It was midday when he woke, and they made lunch together, ate quietly while the springtime storm died off around them.

Steve firmly guided his lover away from the bedroom – it felt like they'd lived in there these last few days – and laughed when Bucky wrapped around him on the sofa instead. “Aren't you sick of me yet?”

“No. Never.” Bucky nuzzled at his throat, assayed a kiss on the rough stubble just under Steve's jaw. “Thank you.”

“You're welcome, love,” Steve said softly, tilting his head so he could chase Bucky's mouth with his own. The kisses weren't completely different from those shared in a tent in a field in France or Germany or Italy, though they would never be exactly the same.

They had once been a waypoint, after all, a warm-up, a stop on the way to stripping each other to make lazy love if time allowed, or for one to shove a hand down the others' trousers, jacking him off with as much efficiency as tenderness, then the other returning the favor before they slept in mud or were called to march again. Kissing had been well and good, but it had always been the beginning, not the whole.

Now it was beginning, middle, and end. The whys were many – Bucky's SSRI's, each of them worrying over the other, each of them quietly, gently, worrying over himself and his own heart. And, tentatively, the knowledge that they had time now. They were, if not exactly safe, then safer than they'd been since those glorious childhood summers, and they could draw each moment out. Impatience could come later, and be sweet fun then, but for now –

Now they would kiss for hours so that Steve finally felt like he belonged in his skin because Bucky had traced him out with mouth and tongue and teeth and had taught him where he ended and the world began.

“May I?” he asked, fingers scraping across the hem of Bucky's t-shirt. His lover nodded, and he pulled the soft henley over Bucky's head, shaking his dog-tags free and mussing long dark hair even more. “There. God, look at you.” He pressed a kiss to the dip where Bucky's collarbones met, breathing in skin still warm from sleep.

“Rather look at you, dollface,” Bucky teased, smiling when Steve made an irritated noise into his chest. “Well, I would.”

“Ass.”

“Shirtless ass, unlike you. May I?” He pulled off Steve's shirt at the other man's nod, and settled back on the sofa, Steve heavy and perfect on his chest. They lined up so that he could press secret kisses in amongst golden hair, sighing when Steve caressed him in a particularly sensitive spot. It would have been bliss alone to be calm in his own head, the brief peace granted him after sleep, but lazy kisses pressed to his skin meant a subtle, additional joy.

“Hey, stop that,” he mumbled, just about aware, through the buzz of happiness, of Steve pressing tender kisses to his flesh arm, to the scars that ran deep along the back of his forearm where they'd repaired the break. The one Steve had put there, in order to save them both. “No guilt today, baby, please.”

“Don't tell me what to do,” Steve said, with absolutely no heat to his words whatsoever. “Maybe I like kissing you someplace different.”

“God, you're the worst liar.”

“Just to you.” Steve grinned up at him, but did move, now pressing soft kisses to Bucky's stomach, working his way across, nuzzling the soft skin. Bucky had lost muscle since he'd stopped running and come home, and his stomach was smooth and flat and Steve loved it, loved the lithe waist and warm skin, loved every inch of his lover, and made sure Bucky knew it. Or, if he couldn't believe everything Steve said just yet, that he knew Steve would tell him over and over, untiringly. “Precious.”

“Stevie...” Bucky pushed himself up so he could meet Steve's mouth with his, drawing the kiss out so they could share breath, his mouth dropping open so that he and Steve could taste each other, drink deep and gradually fall back onto the sofa. This time it was Bucky who went roaming, nuzzling Steve's shoulder, kissing down his bicep and tasting the skin there.

Steve made himself as heavy as possible until Bucky caught on and socked him in the shoulder. He kept laughing even after he'd dumped Steve on the floor, and didn't stop when the other man yanked him down and laid one tiny, precise kiss on the tip of Bucky's nose.

* * *

Between coffee and going for a run and more coffee Steve held off yawning until just past dinner. The sun was setting and the low, golden light painted their apartment as the sound of the street floated up through the open window.

They were, in theory, listening to a ballgame. Bucky was sharpening their kitchen knives. His motions were precise and skilled; not one movement he made was superfluous. Steve lay on the sofa, trying to hide his yawns until Bucky put aside the last knife with an exasperated sigh and leaned over to flick his arm.

“Ow! What?”

“Oh, that didn't hurt at all and you know it. I didn't even use the metal hand,” Bucky said, rolling his eyes. “Steve, baby, go to bed. You've been up longer than I have, now.”

“Um. Sorry.” Steve gave another jaw-cracking yawn, and finally gave in. “Unh, bed. Come with me? Please?” He slept better not alone. He slept better, knowing Bucky was nearby and was all right.

Bucky stood up, a single smooth motion – he'd become much more graceful, Steve had noticed – and held out his hand. “Of course.”

Once in their bedroom, Steve shucked off his clothes and pulled on a pair of soft sweatpants, just about managing to crawl under the covers, still tangled from when Bucky had woken that morning. “Think you can sleep too?”

“No,” Bucky admitted, crawling in beside him and pulling Steve closer until the other man rested his head on Bucky's chest. “I need to know you're safe. Can't do that if I'm asleep,” he explained quietly.

“And if I'm awake? Like this morning?”

Bucky was quiet for a long time, so much so that Steve had nearly lost his battle with the deep gravity of sleep when he answered. “Then I know _I'm_ safe.” His voice was soft and hesitant, finally saying what he couldn't, quite, admit to even just that morning.

The way Bucky healed, the way he put himself back together a little more every day – Steve couldn't find words for it. He wasn't even sure of what it made him feel; what was a mix of pride and sorrow and love and endless awe at what this man was fighting through every single day?

“Oh, Buck.” He forced his eyes open as the last of the light drained from their room. Bucky's face was pale in the sweet, soft light that remained, the lines on his face no longer visible in the twilight. Nothing was going to erase the war and the Winter Soldier, though, and the sadness that had haunted his eyes for so long was still there. Would always be there, Steve thought – but then, that could be said about him, too.

“Shh, forget I said anything. Rest, baby.” He stroked Steve's hair, and Steve turned to kiss his hand.

“Resting. Won't forget, though. You feel safe with me? Is that why you could sleep?”

Bucky hesitates, and nods, and Steve kisses his fingertips again before settling down.

Sleep claims him quickly. He wakes up once, eyes cracking open to find that he's rolled away from Bucky but that the other man is sitting within arm's reach, reading quietly in the low light of a bedside lamp. Steve reaches out to touch Bucky's leg, but is asleep before he can be aware of more than the most basic contact.

He wakes just before dawn, pulled into a kiss with more heat than he expected, and it is a beautiful, beautiful morning.

They fall into a rhythm, after that. Steve sleeps at night – whenever he's not needed elsewhere – then watches over Bucky, who sleeps from after dawn until early afternoon, his body seeming to devour the long hours of quiet sleep. His healing runs deeper, now that he can rest properly, and Steve finds he loves these quiet few hours when he hardly leaves Bucky's side. He reads Gilbert's detailed histories of both world wars, then Churchill's _History of the English-Speaking Peoples_. Sometimes he takes a break and reads some Holmes stories. He draws more than ever and thinks about doing a proper painting of Bucky. He answers all of his e-mail, for the first time ever. And, plenty of days, he simply watches Bucky sleep.

They have afternoons together, and evenings, and the cool, quiet dawn. They have shared kisses, and Sam comes to visit regularly. They visit Clint – sometimes together, sometimes apart – nominally to say hello and actually to play with his dog.

They become lovers, one October day.

Steve sometimes wonders if they'll always live like this, meeting in the spaces between. He's learned not to predict too far into the future, though. No one thought the US would go to war, until bombs rained down on a December day. None of the Howling Commandos thought they would die, so alive were they with their own glory and the belief in their own immortality that is granted to young men. No one thought Bucky Barnes had survived the fall from the train, until he appeared on a road two years ago, amidst fire and smoke. So predictions are useless, and instead they make their world work, find the spaces to fit, and find they fit together within them. And Steve will take it; take it all.

 

 


End file.
